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Occupy Toronto: Copycat protest or the start of a true people’s revolution

By Jayme PoissonStaff Reporter

Fri., Oct. 14, 2011

Put aside political leanings and patience for eclectic protesters clogging city streets and blowing into vuvuzelas— if just for a moment.

Earlier this year, public squares in Egypt and Tunisia erupted. In Tel Aviv, they built and slept in tent cities. In India, one man’s hunger strike inspired hundreds of thousands of anti-corruption protesters to claim the streets. Demonstrations in Greece have paralyzed the country.

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Then, this July, Vancouver advocacy magazine Adbusters called on 20,000 “redeemers, rebels and radicals” to take over lower Manhattan and occupy Wall Street. Hacktivist collective “Anonymous” answered the call by video. A group by the name General Assembly began holding meetings, rallying around an anti-corporate, anti-greed, anti-big bank cause.

•At 10 a.m. Saturday Toronto occupiers follow others from cities around the world and rally against corporate greed and other issues. For full coverage, including a live blog of the day’s events stay with thestar.com and send us your photos of the action at webmaster@thestar.ca

They’ve been camped out in lower Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park for nearly a month now — mish-mashed, loosely organized, and at times contradictory. Most are young students saddled with loans and free time. But they’ve been joined by an older group, under- or unemployed and struggling. All are frustrated by what they believe is a system that’s broken, benefitting the rich as inequities widen. While the banks have been bailed out, the average joe has had scant relief from the recession.

“We are the 99 per cent,” they say.

By 10 a.m. Saturday — with the financial district asleep for the weekend — Toronto occupiers will join their American counterparts and residents of 950 other cities around the world (Vancouver, Calgary, Montreal and Halifax included), according to the United for #Globalchange website. Toronto’s target: The bosses on Bay Street. Or, more generally, economic disparity. Or, even more generally, social inequality.

The plan is simple enough. Meet at the corner of King and York Sts. (Maybe the corner of Bay and King Sts., as there was some confusion at a general meeting Thursday night.) Then, operating by consensus, the group will choose which piece of downtown to claim. The organizing committee has a short list of suggestions.

Protesters signal they agree by holding their hands up above their heads and wiggling their fingers. The group is its own megaphone. When a comrade addresses the group, they repeat each sentence loudly, in unison to ensure the words filter to the back rows.

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“That is the most democratic way we can think of doing it and provide the most legitimacy,” said Kevin Konyuu, an organizer in the OccupyTO (also called the Occupy Bay Street or Occupy Toronto Market Exchange) movement.

He adds: “This isn’t just from New York. This is inspired from around the world. People really are latching onto the idea that we as a people on this planet should be able to make decisions that affect our communities.”

Organizers are silent on which locations made the short list, in part because they will decide all together, democratically, and in part because they want to avoid having their space fenced off ahead of time.

“In the G20 they fenced off an entire portion of downtown,” said Konyuu. “So the idea that someone might pre-emptively fence off where we might want to democratically protest isn’t something that was made up.”

What, specifically, the protesters are standing for (or against) is the tricky part. There’s a push, especially in the media, to define the Occupy movement. Protesters in Zuccotti Park have been criticized for speaking with too many voices.

But others say it doesn’t need defining right now. That it is utterly new in its organization and structure — entirely free-form and grassroots.

In Toronto, the consensus appears to be that the politics will sort themselves out once the occupiers have a space.

“They are not protests that are making demands; they are protests that are aimed at having discussions amongst people and taking the space and time to do that: ‘What sort of world do we want?’” explained Lesley Wood, an associate professor of sociology at York University who researches social movements.

“There is a real emphasis not on making claims, not on making demands, and instead on considering how to make something different. And that’s a hell of a goal. It’s not an easy task and it makes them harder to understand, but I think that’s what’s going on.”

At first, the protesters in Toronto had wanted a media blackout, and then decided they would speak as individuals and not for the group as a whole. Committee volunteer Taylor Chelsea said there were concerns about speaking out because, “With the diversity of issues the 99 per cent have, it was important to not allow a single issue come to represent the diversity that was present.”

She added: “I hope people realize that we won’t know what the shape of this will be until we are there, learning from each other, helping each other and ultimately, finding better ways of recognizing and respecting our differences.”

In Allan Gardens this week, a concrete pillar was spray-painted: “Occupy Toronto: Oct. 15. Be there.” Below it, a peace sign. Post-G20 — with its flaming police cars, smashed storefronts and the largest mass arrests in Canadian history — the spectre of violence still hangs over the downtown core.

Mayor Rob Ford, speaking to reporters after a speech at the Empire Club of Canada on Friday, said, “If people want to protest peacefully, that’s fine. I’m sure it’s going to be a peaceful protest.”

Konyuu said the movement’s emphasis on direct, on-the-ground democracy promotes non-violent behaviour because “There is no reason or excuse to engage in any sort of violence when you actually are able to work with people and never be silenced.”

On Thursday, the protesters were unanimous that their occupation is peaceful and that any violence would only serve to undermine what has so far been a non-violent action in American cities, except for some clashes with police.

Early Friday morning in Denver, police in riot gear forced protesters from a park, placing handcuffs on some.

In New York, occupiers avoided a possible showdown after city authorities backed down on a plan to clean up Zuccotti Park. It was seen as a victory.

“The police are technically part of the 99 per cent. They’re not the decision-makers of society . . . we’re not against them as a point,” said Konyuu, adding that he hopes the city’s force, who said they have a plan in place to help facilitate a peaceful protest, would not try to intimidate protesters.

Many activists said they don’t know how large the numbers will swell. Some anticipated thousands Saturday.

There are familiar faces in the group. Like Dave Vasey, arrested at last year’s G20 summit under the now infamous “secret fence law.” And student activist Farshad Azadian, co-chair of the Toronto Young New Democrats. But even Azadian, well-known in the activist community, doesn’t recognize many people in the crowd. “This is one of the beautiful things about this,” he said.

“People are coming into the movement and saying, ‘Listen, I don’t have to accept this. I know the wealth in Canadian society exists, but it’s in the hands of a small few. It’s in the hands of Bay Street.”

What some call disorganized, the protesters call organic. Much of the work in the lead-up to this weekend has been around infrastructure and logistics such as the creation of a website,Twitter account and Facebook page. On Thursday, a medical committee volunteer made a call for donations of liquid Maalox and baby shampoo, used to treat tear gas and pepper spray.

Antonin, a 33-year-old under-employed University of Toronto grad who’s organizing the Occupy Toronto food team, said the committee is receiving about 40 donation-related emails every day. Farmer’s markets have been donating food. The committee has collected 100 pounds of fruit and vegetables, raised $1,000 and gotten a bakery to commit to 100 loaves of bread each day — indefinitely.

“The prep team is basically free-styling recipes as we get donations,” he said.

The Ontario Federation of Labour has thrown its support behind the protest, encouraging members to go out. Unions have not been asked to help organize in an official capacity because they want to give the movement some room to grow internally. The Canadian Auto Workers endorsed participation in the movement Friday. And the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents more than 50,000 healthcare workers in Ontario said they were providing Toronto protesters with first-aid training and bulk food supplies.

“Of course we support it. We understand it. We’ve been fighting the same thing for a long time: greed,” said Ken Georgetti, president of the 3.2-million member Canadian Labour Congress earlier this week. “It’s rapacious.”

Some are skeptical that the protests here in Canada will gain the momentum they have in the U.S.

David Murakami Wood, a Queen’s University sociology professor who holds the Canada research chair in surveillance, said we haven’t seen widespread protests like these since the 1960s civil rights movement. But since Canada has not experienced the same kinds of economic hardship as the U.S. and other countries, he anticipates the protests here will be “muted.”

“In Canada this is an imitative movement; it’s not organic,” he said. “I don’t think it will catch fire as it has in the U.S.; I could be wrong.”

Both Prime Minister Harper and Premier Dalton McGuinty said they had confidence that Occupy Bay Street protests this weekend would be different from what is happening in the United States.

Harper didn’t want to comment on the issue other than to say he thinks Canadians understand the country performed well during the global economic recession and “didn’t bail out our banking sector.”

Ask protesters what they think of Ottawa’s cheery talk about having tougher financial regulations and a more progressive tax system than the U.S., and they bring up militarization, high tuition, shortsighted environmental policies and the treatment of indigenous groups — all connected to economic justice. Many think it’s only a matter of time before Canada goes the way of the U.S.

“There’s such a huge dark side to being Canadian that needs to be highlighted,” said Guy Fogel, a 41-year-old ESL teacher.

And how long do they plan to protest? However long it takes, it seems.

“When the global leaders are not able to step up and meet the most pressing needs of the world right now, then the people will,” said Konyuu.

“So it’s not going to be days. It’s not going to be weeks. I don’t even think it’ll be months. I think it will be as long as it takes. It could be a year. We could be looking at the future of this movement turning into, my personal hope, a democratic revolution.”

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